Pointshelf v3

It’s been almost four years of Pointshelf - and I’m really proud of our final product and our entire team. The objective was always to solve an actual tangible problem, and create a product we could use ourselves, frequently. It was problematic to have to carry around multiple cards in our wallets, having to remember details and keep track of points and rewards from different loyalty programs.

We are currently at 12,000 users, with a little over a 100 outlets in Mumbai, 1000 transactions a month, and growing at 20% every week! We’re building out all the features you’ve been asking for - soon you’ll be able to make reservations and book special curated set menus at new restaurants, and pay by cash to top-up prepaid wallets at specific eateries.

Pointshelf has been quick to metamorphose and pivot as per user/market needs - we’ve come a long way. The first version started with the objective of providing a loyalty platform to small businesses, removing the need for paper and plastic loyalty cards for consumers - and bringing in a loyalty and customer-management infrastructure where it hasn’t existed previously.

We started as a replacement for stamp-based reward cards (primarily at cafes and restaurants), we became about discovering cool places (and offers) around you, and now we have grown to become a full-fledged payment system with a focus on the food and beverage sector.

We built simple tools for merchants to manage their customer data - track their footfall, track individual customer preferences, send them special customised offers, set up promotions and give them a platform to send out information.

All this time later, we’re still sticking to making things securely cashless, seamless, and easy. We’re becoming the fastest payment method at the coolest bars and restaurants across Mumbai (hitting Bangalore and others starting next month!). You can split bills easily with your friends - whether by amount or by assigning them specific menu items, you can collect points at different places you frequent.

A tremendous amount of work has gone in to this latest version - we now have a significantly larger team, and we’re working faster to bring you new things.

On the consumer side: By examining user personas (we’ve identified 6 broad types/classifications of users in these situations, and the factors in their decisions), we’re seeking to improve the experience of discovery - helping groups of people effectively collectively choose and agree upon a place, and then take of all the steps afterward.

and their deciding factors, examined for the Discovery feature (that we are re-revamping)

San Francisco Pride Parade

The San Francisco Pride Parade 2015 documented in a set of quick ink sketches, to be viewed as a set with super-talented photographer Shweta Gulati’s polaroid photos of the event.

I could someday do an entire series on only the outfits of drag queens.

San Francisco Pride Parade '15

Special thanks to Homeshake for the rad soundtrack.

Allert

Allert was a hypothetical project prototype made as part of the admissions/visa process of the Copenhagen Institute of interaction Design. This project and product video were made over the span of three days (in which I learnt to edit video!) - the assignment was to create a hypothetical business idea, and explain how it could be best implemented in Denmark.

Business Description:Download Business Proposal DeckAllert (Allergy Alert) is a phone/smartwatch app, and works to help users purchase only products that wouldn't trigger their specific food allergies.In phase one, Allert will have tie-ups with supermarket chains and our team and employees will maintain an inventory of ingredients of all consumable products in their retail stock, thereby keeping a database of common allergens within these.

This will be used in-store during grocery shopping. Upon signup, the user is asked to select categories of food allergies that are applicable to them. Once in a partner-store, there are two flows available: either an individual product can be scanned, or the bulk of purchases will be scanned for allergens upon checkout.

If an allergen is detected, an alert will be sent to the user’s phone or smartwatch. Alternative similar products may be suggested. For a bulk scan being performed at checkout, once all the items are checked out, a scannable barcode/QR code is generated by the POS, and when scanned by Allert - this generates the relevant warnings. Alternatively, the user would give their username to the cashier, and relevant alerts would then show up on the phone/smartwatch.

The food allergy and intolerance products market is set to hit $26.5 billion by 2017, as per current predictions. With over twenty supermarket chains in total, and three major grocery chains holding a market share of 89 percent (the remaining are foreign chains and discount stores), Allert would be well-suited to Denmark, where the infrastructure of these chain-supermarkets would provide consistency and the requisite support.

How to monetise: Allert will be free for users. Our primary customers will be Supermarkets/ food-retail establishments. They will be allowed to track customer purchases, shopping habits and preferences, thereby allowing supermarkets to send targeted offers, suggested products, or notifications to the user. Curated products that are safe for purchase can be showcased - this will be a paid feature that products could opt-in to.

We seek to expand Allert to medical/pharmacies, as well as dine-in restaurant experiences in future phases.

Product Demo for Allert (Allergy Alert)Special thanks to MGMT for the soundtrack, and Chelsea Purgahn and Raghav Dhawan for dying dramatically in supermarkets for me, at such short notice.

Building prototype in Form

Phone/Watch screens, and Working Prototype (Allergen Selection)

HipCask

Identity Design, UX/Wireframes, User Interface Design for iOS 7.

FEATURED ON THE APP STORE (FOOD & DRINK)!HipCask is an iPhone app that catalogues Indian and international wines and spirits, suggests pairings for each, and curates related content and special experiences that users can participate in. This was an information-heavy app, and needed to allow users to search through and filter the catalogue using a variety of parameters, as well as perform a number of actions like reserving an experience/deal, locating the nearest shop that a particular beverage may be available, find specific details about any given wine - including grape descriptions, serving temperature, the glass it is ideally to be served in, etc.

The logo was designed to show a wine-cask / barrel with an "H" engraved within it.

Service Centres

Wireframes, User Experience Design, Interface Design, Icon Design

This consumer-facing device support app allows users to troubleshoot and self-diagnoses issues with their devices, have access to live support and also schedule physical repair services by coordinating seamlessly with the nearest service centre for their specific device. Pretty exhaustive at 39 screens, but allows users to track their repair progress, and arrange for having devices picked up and delivered to locations of their convenience, while also gathering redeemable status points for using the app.

Sparq

Sparq is a dating app for iOS and Android, founded by a startup based in Mumbai. Identity Design, UX/Wireframes, User Interface Design (currently in development)

The design research turned out pretty interesting, so I wrote about it here on MumbaiBoss. Dating apps have been done before, it's a crowded space, but there was an untapped user base in India that was perhaps ready for it - so we needed to do something different and make it more fun. This is targeted at a younger crowd, college kids and young adults looking to casually meet and build connections. Using games to build descriptions of themselves, keeping users engaged before they even started to browse through potential matches. We would allow people to anonymously invite their friends/love interests onto the app via SMS or email, and enable them to chat with two-way matches while providing them with conversation suggestions / icebreakers on the basis of their shared interests, common friends, and more.

It was a really fun project, visually as well as user-experience design-wise, and involved analysing the fundamental problem of giving people a sense of security while using such a platform, as well as matching users to the right people based on the descriptions that emerged out of the word game at the beginning.

Cyanobacteria Tracking

Mobile UI Design, UX/Wireframes

This was part of a set of initial design concepts for an Android app to easily track, record and compare the blooming and growth patterns of cyanobacteria clusters over various regions.

The map view needed to show at a glance which areas were facing a dangerous concentration, filter by concentration / turbidity / chlorophyll levels, and needed the ability to overlay actual satellite images over it. Within each selected location, there were detailed statistics that needed to be shown - as well as comparison mechanisms to show changes over time, or between two or more locations.

Personal Project: Restory Game

Personal Project! This new year I've resolved to flesh out some personal project ideas, there's this writing-game idea I've had for a while - involving two players completing each other's sentences and folding paper. It was a classroom game, but I've been mulling on a mobile version of it, with added features like prompts etc.

This is one of many UX concepts for this, involving turnstile like horizontal dial-like elements for each sentence - this is pretty much just thinking out loud. More refined concepts and process diagrams coming soon.

Ahimsa Kart

Website Design, Icon Design, Identity Design

This was an end-to-end website design for a vegan e-store based in Singapore, that specializes in vegan and organic items - food, beauty, fashion and home/lifestyle products.

Infographic: Antibody Sequence Annotation

Data visualization for a comparison of solutions to a gene-sequencing problem. Using Time on a logarithmic X-axis and Accuracy on the Y-axis, different solutions were plotted as points on a double helix.